The climax of the Academy Awards, the announcement of winner for Best Picture, turned into a bit of an ugly scene Sunday night. Presenter Warren Beatty looked at the envelope and paused for a long moment. He showed it to his co-presenter Faye Dunaway, who announced "La La Land." The music swelled, there were cheers, producers gave their heartfelt thanks as their teary-eyed moviemaking team looked on. But people in headsets were coming onto the stage, there were murmurs in the background, and finally producer Jordan Horowitz announced "There's a mistake. Moonlight—you guys won Best Picture."
A sheepish Beatty explained to the audience that the card in his hand had said "Emma Stone, La La Land," the Best Actress winner—he had been handed the wrong envelope. Despite a quick joke from emcee Jimmy Kimmel about the similar Steve Harvey snafu, the mistake ended the night on a sour note for the Academy, for ABC, for the La La Land team (obviously) and even for the Moonlight team, who were denied the unadulterated feel-good moment they had earned; "It's very hard to feel joy in a moment like that," said Moonlight star Mahershala Ali to The Hollywood Reporter.
At the moment, the blame for the mix-up seems to be falling on PwC, caretakers of the Oscar ballots, whose carefully guarded "ballot briefcase" tours the nation each year on its way to Hollywood. The accounting firm tweeted the following early-morning statement:
— PwC LLP (@PwC_LLP) February 27, 2017
As of this writing, PwC has not addressed the issue further on social media, and a representative declined to be interviewed by PR News. But let's examine the effectiveness of handling the crisis with a single tweet. First, it's acting as a kind of containment unit where all the public's responses are being collected. Those responses range from shaming:
@PwC_LLP what a shame! You ruined the celebration for Moonlight and hurt the crew from LA LA Land.
— Guess Who (@abafos) February 27, 2017
...to awaiting an explanation:
@PwC_LLP It will be an interesting explanation how someone could be given the wrong envelope, when it was the last envelope. ?#waiting pic.twitter.com/5N5iZcXMFc
— Professor Taxi (@prof_taxi) February 27, 2017
...to reason and understanding:
@PwC_LLP in the realm of life, it's really no big deal. No one died, the ultimate winners got their Oscar, we're all human.
— Hanna Bec (@HannaBec) February 27, 2017
That last tweet makes a good point. Nobody is in danger and it's not an ongoing situation; if there's a time when it's appropriate to release a brief statement and shut up for a while, this is it. Further auto-flagellation may not accomplish anything, and when audience sentiment is confined largely to the replies to a single tweet, it's easier to measure and assess what future measures should be taken.
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